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Funky Felted Flowers

As I mentioned in my last post, I took a class recently to learn how to felt flowers out of wool.  I’ll just cut to the eye candy, here is a bouquet of all flowers from all of the participants:

Flowers courtesy of R. Hosta, B. Hosta, A. Baker, J. Mack, J. Fassinger and J. Campbell

 

I have been trying out all sorts of techniques to make fabric flowers with a future series of vases in mind; this felting technique will be a nice addition to my repertoire.  It is not too difficult of a technique, but since it is wet felting, it can get a bit messy.  It all starts out with wool roving.  The most fun part for me is selecting colors.

Yesterday, I felted some more flowers.  Joining the stem and sepals to a flower is tricky, you have to get the timing right and be sure that flower hasn’t been worked too much in the early felting process.  Otherwise, the two parts won’t join.

I have lots and lots of wool roving around, and until now, I have not been very inspired by working with wool.  That’s all changed now, many felted flowers are in my future!

I’ll need to take a break from the flowers, I am already behind in the ICAD challenge.  What will I have to show on Tuesday?

 

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ICAD Week One

Seven days, seven little index cards, so far so good in my index-card-a-day challenge attempt!  I’ve already slipped a bit behind for this week, but I know what I want to do for the two not-yet-started cards, I will catch up.

ICAD Week One

 

On Day Seven, the prompt was “stencil,” so I played with my stencils from TSC Designs and Mayco Ceramics.

The yellow stencil is from one of the big box craft supply stores, and while the design is lovely, it has a sticky back that has been causing problems,  It sticks to everything, and the bond is stronger than a lot of the tapes I use.  It is starting to pull itself apart.  The sticky back is a great concept, makes sense to have a stencil that doesn’t slip while you are using it, but I’m concerned about the self-destruction of the stencil , and the potential damage to the artwork that I use it on.

The colors are the Tsukineko inks from TSC, applied with Fantastix fillable markers.  I like the look achieved by overlapping layers of color and shapes or lines.  I will be exploring this technique in fabric, and I already want to try quilting the resulting fabric with a different design, not trying to follow the stencil patterns.

Over the past weekend, I took an inspiring class on making felted wool flowers.  Check back on Thursday for the more on that.

 

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Another Daily Challenge

No, this doesn’t directly involve art quilting or any stitching, but it is all about my ongoing attempts at art journaling.  I am, for the third year, trying to complete the 60 day Index Card a Day (ICAD) challenge.  Check out the link, the artist that puts on the challenge has a great website full of ideas and tips for mixed media art journaling.  While I struggle to journal on a regular basis, I do believe it is a great way for artists and those who want to be creative to work on skills, habits and ideas.

Getting back to the ICAD event, the challenge creator posts lists of themes or prompts for each day of the challenge.  Sometimes, the daily prompt just doesn’t do anything for me.  That’s when I tend to go astray in keep up with the challenge.  When the prompt is something like “meerkat” or “cassette tape,” my mind wanders to things I much rather do, stitching, making a cake, taking a walk.  The first year I attempted the ICAD challenge, it did not go well.  I completed only 11 cards, and half of those were done six months after the challenge ended.

Last year, I fared better; thirty-three cards completed.  These are not intended to be great works of art, and I try to keep the time put into them to 15 minutes per card.  Of course, some take a bit longer, and I still want to fill in the gaps of the cards I didn’t attempt.

Today, I am six days into the challenge, and I have six cards:

Will I keep up the early momentum?  Now that I’ve blogged about it, I hope that I will.  The challenge started last Saturday, so I will post my weekly progress on Tuesdays.

 

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Day by Day, Tantalizing Threads

A  very quick post today… I am more than halfway through my stitch out project of all the colors of House of Embroidery threads.

I don’t know yet how I am going to join all of the postcards that I am making in the course of this adventure.  I initially wanted to make them into a little fabric book, but I might make them into a flat wall hanging to put in my booth at quilt shows, as I have some of the colors available when I am on the road.

I’m enjoying seeing the colors stitched out, and I am looking forward to using these threads more in my collages when I get through this daily project.

 

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On Thursday, check back for my progress on yet another daily project that I just started, the annual Index Card a Day Challenge.

 

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Three Strikes

Today’s post is a tough lesson in the reality of learning a new creative skill.  A lot of what gets made is not very good.  It is very difficult to admit that something (or in this case, three things) that I’ve spent a lot of time and materials on, is rubbish.  But there are a few positive things to take from this week’s work.  One, I finished three 8 X  10″ pieces.  Two, I tried some techniques that have potential.  Take a look:

I love the hand stitching that I did on these, and I am pleased with the effects created by the machine couching of the funky yarns.

What keeps tripping me up is the final assembly and quilting.  These three pieces were pillowcase bound and then lightly quilted to secure the layers.  I ended up with some lumpy areas and wavy edges.  The last one was especially troublesome:

These are just not up to my creative vision, and certainly showing my lack of technical skill.  Even though they are three strikes, I refuse to be called “out,” the only way I can get better with my quilting skills is to make more.  The really bad thing is that the color combination is making me crave Neapolitan ice cream!